"And He has made from one blood
every nation of men
to dwell on all the face of the earth,
and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their
dwellings,
so that they should seek the Lord,
in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him,
though He is not far from each one of us;
for in Him we live and move and have our being,
as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’

"Therefore, since we are the
offspring of God,
we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone,
something shaped by art and man’s devising.

"Truly, these times of
ignorance God overlooked,
but now commands all men everywhere to repent,
because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in
righteousness
by the Man whom He has ordained.
He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead."

DESIGNER LIVING
- ITS BASIS

In the several million word
treatise on Deity and Design ...
far more than enough has been given to demonstrate logically and illustrate
empirically that we are a design; and even in the last few volumes,
as in Hapless Hitches and Divine Healing ...
Ch. 4, and in this current volume,
Chs. 7 -
8,
this has been extended.

Now it is time to apply these
things and to see the results in those terms,
which is to say,
the exact opposite of the current direction of history,
which is in itself simply one more verification of design
(as when you REFUSE to put in new oil for your car):

what happens when you do not
heed it!

The body is designed, a unity
with contributory production and performance functions and sites. There lie the
circulatory systems, the air-ventilation system, the food intake, absorption and
energy distribution systems, the computer-like but yet highly distinctive brain,
the nervous systems, including the central and peripheral aspects, the autonomic
nervous system, with its divisions of the sympathetic nervous system and the
parasympathetic, with their contrivances for using blood channels, and division
of labour, the reproductive system and the disease resistance formulations and
formations; and here are found its electrical routings and wattage components, its
muscular structures and their co-ordination with the nervous system, its
anatomical structurings and their relationships with the physiological needs and
variables, the motion systems for air, food, blood, for feet, for hands, for
physical scupturings, for collaboration of skeleton and muscle, nerve and need.

Now we come to the crux.

There is also what cannot be
measured, has no colour and moves in a different domain. It is thought. It has
its built-in logical systems, and discursive and originative facilities and
faculties in a sort of university of learning and knowledge, one which of course
uses a campus for its activities, but has operatives on those fields, which are
by no means chained to them, as is normal in any university. This is a place, an
operational site, a function, a cosmos indeed, where the static is there in
measure, as in a site, to enable the exotic, or at will, erratic, or despotic,
or inventive, or ratiocinative, or emotional or directive dynamics to operate
(as in any university, with some having this or that emphasis included or
expanded or deleted), while the mobile, the fancifully felicitous, the
dynamically imaginative is also provided for, at least for implementation.

Beyond this cosmos, is that of
spirit, which intertwines at times, though at others can be far more separate,
like a Chancellor's Office and occupant.

The distinction between mind and
spirit, so that one can envisage the operational realities of what is not
physical in kind, nor spatial in enterprise, is that between the rational, the
finding of means, the elaboration of understanding of what is, of the status
quo, and that which is mode elective, imaginative in ORIGIN, enterprise
constructive and the functional abode of will. Here is another fabric to direct
the material, but immaterial in type. Here is the luminary, there is the space
for it; here is the volitional, there is the place for it. But that is not all
of its place.

As to these cosmoi, being all
designer-products in kind, as shown earlier, and illustrated by their formations and
formulations, their power to conceive in rational and systematic mode allied to
their exhibition of conceptualisation in their mode of implementation, from the
directional to the notational to the nervous systems (where reachable by thought
directly or otherwise) to the anatomical to the world: they are correlatives.
Disparate in power and sphere of operation, they are conjoined for life in
operational felicity.

Not only is this so, but also,
within one cosmos, the spirit, and another, the mind, there can be

such
obfuscations because of an evil will (hating reality, its Creator and at war
with Him,
and so self-devastating to some extent now, and more later),

such clarifications because of
divine light,

such intimations and such
illuminations,
some false, some true, some deceptive, some invective, some defective,
but some authentic in terms of the Creator and His systems and productions
here magnificently conjoined:

that we have a universe of human
life and liveliness.

Some of it breeds death to spirit in
delusion and obfuscation, some of it tends to life, in humility and aspiration
for the knowledge of God, the interpretation of meaning for human life and the
evacuation of what soils and spoils it. God has, as He said as seen in the
quotation from the Acts above, given to man means, if by any means he might seek
for and grope for him. And many, some to this degree, some to that, did so. Yet
the efforts were largely in vain, except where God Himself, breaking through the
dimness of delusion and the mists of deceit, the cleavages of thought and the
breaches of truth, brought man to the light.

In degree, they sought, in measure
they found; but their thoughts were without the truth until the truth was by
their side, freely and abundantly. Prophets sought and found, because called by
God; and Jesus came and presented in contemporary format, the Gospel of the
grace of God, first adumbrated in Eden (Genesis 3:15), and almost the only hope
for any who, in the mind of God, were foreknown that they might be covered by
payment in fact, truth in action, mercy performed and not only propounded, when
the time came, so that the thoughts of eternity became current by His own
action, as all His people were found.

Thus by rebuke and replacement, at a
height and depth alike in the flood (Genesis 6), in symbol and substance, as in
the Temple in stone and in 'stones' (I Peter 2:9ff.), by power and by grace (as
with King David in his peregrinations, in Joseph in his patience and reflected
light, in Daniel in his prodigious provisions concerning history to come, from
the Lord, by His word and by His works, the Lord acted. In our Age, the outline
is filled in, the prevenient photographs of prophecy have become the face of
Christ, and we are in the now near two millenial post, in the grace of God.

As Paul preached, presented in the
word of God at Acts 4:6:

" For it is the God
who commanded light to shine out of darkness
who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of
God
in the face of Jesus Christ."

Now the aura of divinity and aurora
of His light has shone, and we are equipped on all sides from His word and
through His works, with the evidences of our design, of His design for us, amid
our designs and our wills and ways; and while the house of faith cannot be
bought, the place in the household of faith can be found, and here there is
designer-living.

We have looked at the body, mind and
spirit of man in overview. Designer living has application in
every one of these features, even in the individual campus, where the life is
installed, and in those adjoining, in their billions nowadays, and in those
physical arenas, other ones than these which surround. These also are cumulative in
consequence, whether we think of cumulus clouds or diamond surfaces, of
stratosphere or space, of mines or of oceans, of rainfall or what controls and
can disperse or pollute it.

While we ponder some the
inter-relationships between individual campuses (and some like to have regional
associations called nations) and international ones, and for that matter, rational
and irrational ones (these being components in campuses which can be collated
socially), imaginative and rigid ones, furious ones and impecunious ones, rich
ones and poor ones, militant ones and military ones, irenic ones and those in
inconsequential stasis, there is a certain atmosphere.

This can change. We speak of eras of
peace and war, plenty and confusion and so on. In fact, there is always a
continuity in some of the campuses.

Thus war and hatred, spite and envy,
evil thinking against God or others though it be false, flippant overlooking of
evil, without justice, misuse of justice for gain, to the devastation of its
operational reality, egotistic clinging to power with a pretence of rule,
stealing of ideas, vomiting of ideals, slipping on the sliding surfaces for
thought and action thereby created, covetousness and the cloaking of evil
intention in pseudo-virtuous looks of the angel where lies the heart of the
devil: all these things continue. Now they rise, like the pollution of the air,
of the sea, and the spreading disturbance of rain patterns; now they fall,
like the
international approximations to insanity and compoundings of this with the
ethically insanitary, the pseudo-religious intrigues for power, using the very
name of the deity for the works of oppression and devilish disregard of man, the
inveterate counsels of war and the aggregations of near to terminal explosives.

The Age is scarcely able to contain
the combination of power through material knowledge of the way God created the
universe to work, immaterial guesswork about the way He created it that it might
work, and confusions of the two; of its functional operations with its
dysfunctional defilements by man, its holy intentions at times and in episodes,
with its hatred, ambition and devilish cunning; of the confusion of national
power with national interest, and of the latter with what is good.

Thus the reality is now quite calmly
a matter of concern, whether the race can continue with SUCH power and SUCH ill
will and SUCH mutual hatreds as scar its spiritual surface, and pollute its
ideological and ideational atmospheres. The darkness is lusting after the light,
not to know it so much as to put it to bed in the grass, not knowing what it
does, nor greatly caring, but desperate with thrust, ignominious without trust
in the Almighty. Nor is that name enough, for they manufacture mighties like
women's nighties, with frills and lace, but without the power of enduring wear.
When it comes to the Word of God as man, Jesus Christ, He must be changed into
some format that will focus some current philosophic gambit or gamble; and so
the darkness puts sparks into the night, always hoping, or doping, never coping,
justly afraid when it is not bellowing its need, servile to greed, abstracted
from truth, climbing ladders of shadows and hitting the ground. It is as in
Isaiah 59, the Gentile innings this time.

So it has gone; and so was it to go.
The Bible has found for man the truth the despises. God has indeed not
left Himself without a witness.

This is all to be seen in two main
sectors, in terms of predictability and prediction. First, it has been
biblically predicted
as shown in SMR Chs. 8-9, and this with stress
on one race, that of the Jew, and one nation, Israel, which is far from
consummative in glory, but is a fixed feature for reference, and for reference.
The dynamics
of evil in the other races can relate to this, as they develop. Just as they
were to do, so they have done; and this is now to be seen in detail of
no small amount (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5). Second, to a small but significant
degree, far lesser than the biblical prediction one, but still impressive, the
direction of flow of mankind is
predictable on the basis of the biblical perspective. In other words, prediction
is direct on the one hand, and the principles enabling a significant amount of
insight in general terms, as to what will be, has been made available through
the very principles and perspective of the Bible, as well. The one agrees with
the other, and history agrees with both.

Thus divorce from deity is certain
to lead to divorce from design. It stands to reason. In fact it IS often
reasoned, on false premises of course, and with false promises as a norm for
LIBERATION from the force of design and morals and commands and Maker and all of
that style of thing. They want to be their so precious selves, with the intense
and immense irony that the more they assert their little selves, the littler
they are, and the more they liberate themselves, the more bound they become to
their libidinous libations and erratic excesses, like cars misdriven and energy
misspent.

Accordingly, the European Union DIRECTIVE to Britain to
give full acceptance to homosexually inclined, for active TROOPS is one example
(Wake Up World! ... Ch. 3).
The San Francisco rush for 'marriages' between those of same gender was a scurry
and a flurry of desire, when the law seemed for a short time to permit it. Other
bodies are beginning openly to permit it. Indeed the time has come when precise
and particular questions of legal rights and provisions for equality with those
whose associations at the sexual level are in terms of the dereliction of design, which is highly
specific and exceedingly clear, are being both raised and settled.

Ethical norms likewise are being
delightedly defenestrated. Out the window with the clarity of light. What ?
women and children first ? of course not, unless it is convenient. What ?
protect children from sexual predators ? of course not, when they are 16. What ?
await maturity for drivers of cars, who can kill like assassins when too young
to realise what life is, and the meaning of their own lives in particular, or
unready, while the case is with many of them they are
experiencing growth in mind, spirit and independence, and still making basic
assessment ? Of course not, release them into the traffic, and let their young
indiscretions let blood make the roads slithery while politicians remain
dithery, unwilling to exclude what is immature and unfounded in the main.

Indeed, why stop there ? Give them the vote
to the 16 year olds, this seems some new asininity, gambit or gamble. Thus, if
those yet without much in the way of wisdom, because their very minds are not
mature, may vote for this or that Party, might not that Party with gross
negligence, seek such a vote. Let us then be governed by children, through the
proxy of misused democracy and glory in it. That is the direction. Wisdom is
virtually hated, and the connivance of a vagrant will, an unsavoury wilfulness
is leading to results more and more ludicrous.

Thus an excellent letter in a
newspaper, and an article in the same one, expose with no small vigour
some of the incredible seeming desolations being wrought in Canada, that scene
of soul-stirring beauty in its created magnificences. These detail points like
this.

People are now able to be told JUST
WHERE LIBERTY FINISHES. It is where someone else is hurt, in his or her feelings. TRUTH is not relevant, we are told.
INTENTION is not to the point. MENTION is what matters, and RESULT is the point.
HE is hurt, YOU will be. That is the see-saw. Open the mouth, someone cries, My
feelings are hurt! Not only do you then find you are to shut it, but you are
liable at law. Truth is detested, fragility is the basis, and its splintering
glass sees little in its broken condition.

What then. Think of a case. Someone
is there, he listens, he reads. HE does not like your words, your delineation of ideas
or ideology or religion, what then ? Then you are now subject not only to litigation, but to
this without defence, by authoritarian appointment of penalty, and you can be
sued simultaneously in several places. That is what we are being told in this
newspaper-letter ensemble, the latter reflecting a site.

This last point is made in the
letter, which also presents the amazing legal configuration in Canada, better to
be set with Nebuchadnezzar or Sennacherib than in a modern democracy (but we are
interpreting change). This appears in The Australian, July 1,
2008. It cites material from The Ottawa Citizen on
realclearpolitics.com. In this site, the point is noted that far from alone is
the case of Mark Steyn and Maclean's Magazine (since closed down...), one of the
Islamic confrontations on the part, it would seem, of those who instead of
defending against criticism, choose to be offended and to prosecute. This is a
mere inkling of the legal ink.

This is a mere item. Let us pursue
the information given.

A single complaint in this field of
feeling and imagined hurt, by
any reader, anywhere, suffices to launch a secret enquiry, where the target
person or body has no right to confront the accuser. That in itself constitutes an immediate distortion
of justice. It is ALWAYS necessary to be able to confront an accuser, since this
has a specific alchemy, involving the consciences of both, the precise knowledge of both
with intimate recalls, and power to expose. If someone attacks you with a
hatchet or a law, the credentials of the blade must be investigated by the party
concerned. Withholding such information is part of the bestiality of the beast.
He works in secret. This is the biblical picture: terrorising, lofting power,
downgrading of all personality to despotic principle.

What more is found regarding this
Canadian situation from these sources ? Truth, it is pointed out, is
no defence, No harm has been done, someone may object ? this too is not a defence. The inquisitors, it is
recorded, have autonomous power to inflict a sentence, perhaps after months of
time-consuming interchange. Nor is this all. They may want to give you a fresh
view.

Now let China rejoice. Not there
alone is the inhuman horror to be found of have 're-education programs', in
which the victim of divergence from State policy having been judged, hurt and
degraded, is now to be changed within, if possible, to grisly materialist
or relativist machinations without truth*1, humanity or
reality.

Re-education, or brain torture,
from which it is hard to differentiate it, is now said to occur 'quite
frequently' in Canada. Is this to become The land of the Maple Thief, who steals
liberty and by ad hoc philosophies, makes truth truant and human feelings into a
pseudo-god ? China in Canada, we gather from this letter and this report on the
Web, has company. One can and does love much about China, and has much to do
with some of its citizens, and the same is true of Canada; but friend sharpens
friend, as iron with iron, and the intention and the truth are crucial in this.
Be too shallow, too superficial to listen to criticism, even if sometimes wrong,
not ready to be corrected if truth so demands, and you may inherit the trouble
which pride and the personally portentous too richly deserve. Is it better to suffer
hurt feelings or ruin ?

Returning to the letter noted, it is
interesting that the hopeful writer declares this: "The Human Rights Code must
be re-written to eliminate future challenges to free speech and press, and
the HRCs themselves taken down."

Now let us consider in tandem, the
article by Janet Albrechtsen, in The Australian, June 18, 2008, p.
12. She also notes that Steyn and Maclean's were taken to the British Columbian
Human Rights Tribunal, accused of "flagrant Islamaphobia" when the
magazine ran excerpts from Steyn's best seller, American Alone.
Questions of the 'West's' dangers were pursued in that book, in terms of
Islamic birth-rates, perhaps in rather the way some in times past said much the
same about Roman Catholic birthrates, and the demographic effects, when it comes
to democracy and politics. Janet points out that Canadian human rights
tribunals have a 100 per cent conviction rate on so-called "hate speech".

Does awareness of danger, as of
Hitler, or of Communism*2in its heyday, or of avian influenza, does this also
deserve to be so harassed, exterminated and then subjected to the irrational
concept that it is not ONLY hate speech but a phobia! Is such slander, is such
juridical libel to be permitted to ACCOMPANY a court's action and authority, so
that truth is merely a memory to the profession and righteousness is pre-judged
by a legal pen dipped in culture, enshrined in governmental law!

This 'hate' misnomer (as it often
is) as an expression of synthesis of events with preconceptions, alien to truth, is
convenient but rash. You hate what you consider wrong, dangerous to mankind and
to truth, perhaps; but is this the same as hating the person concerned! Is the
same substitute for logic to imply that a doctor who hates pneumonia hates his
patients when this disease afflicts them ? Is hatred of an ideological component
or composition the same as hating those who are afflicted by it!

On what grounds ? Simple logical
fallacies like this are increasingly being used to falsify truth, to inflict on
those who seek good in liberty, the chains of the growing darkness of our Age.
It is the customary lust of darkness to make inveterate the extinction of light,
by deleting discourse, chaining criticism, ignoring logic, making culture king
where culture is what people happen to do and think, enshrined into a religion
of convenience, a protocol of permissiveness where the thing NOT permitted is
analysis that is unyielding, rationality that does not lie down and truth which
can stand without supports to hold it up in the wind, a mere legal fiction or
cultural spasm.

While this confrontation is
occurring so that one point of view may be hammered, and those who seek to
expose contemporary ideological idols to criticism, or to stimulate thought are
closed down, there is developing, judging by these reports and prior events, a
whole situation in Canada which affronts the soul, staggers the mind but does
not surprise the spirit. Why not ? It is because debasement has become the order
of the day, feelings superseding truth, people papier-mâchéed
into mere material for ideological, often irrational or flagrantly desired cultural or religious oppression.

Albrechtsen notes an infamous case.
One preacher, Stephen Boisson, we are informed, was LEGALLY told that
firstly he must not mention a topic where he had a certain viewpoint, in that
light, again, in newspapers, on the internet, by email, on the radio or in
public speeches. From mass and electronic media, therefore, he was to live in
exile. He was in these regards, to be made a conversational cripple,
a butt for libel, an object as in Chinese prisons (the ones that have walls)
where any movement against the Party Line would result in pain of the most
excruciating kind; or else he would be subjected to the pulsating pressures of the Party.
Indeed, the sinuous character of some Chinese methods of humiliation,
expropriation and detention are far from being characteristic of any one nation,
when you find such things as these in a society which once was not unlike our
own, on the American continent.

That such a denial of TRUTH as
criterion, as defence, such a skipping around INTENTION as pertinent, even if
you meant good and were conscientiously seeking good for the one who now
objects, and had NEVER insisted on personal conversation against the stated will
of that person: that such a violation as this should be permitted is a signal of ethical mutilation at the
highest level. It is comically ludicrous, tragically ponderous and all but
inconceivably arrogant, beginning to become parallel in some ways, to the futile
misuses of force in the Romanist Inquisition of grievous horror, lifting its
leaden feet amid the ashes of man, over some centuries.

By NO means, is the torture of the
body the most fatal; it is the torture of the soul, the spirit, the life, the
mind. It is for these the body serves, and wise the mind which is in subjection
not to society but to Him who made man. The regality that matters, beyond the
chatters of ma, is the Father of spirits, the Creator and the Designer, whose book, the Book of
the Lord, the Bible represents not least, the Designer instructions for
the use of the clothing of flesh which we have. Yes and it directs also for the
heart and spirit, the mind and the mentality of man. Play God and it is vain to
hope you will not find Him at work upon you. Consider, you judges, says Psalm 2,
"Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son, lest He be angry..."

But in the bulk,
increasingly en bloc, they do not hear. What they say, however, this Truth
hears.

While millions move into mental
illness from many causes, yet one of these causes is the mental awareness of
immovable crushing forces, and the uninterpretable-seeming psychic forces, the
looming destiny forces, personally unmanageable forces and disintegrative
social forces. Depression from any one or combination of these, in any degree of
depth, comes very naturally, for the mind which is unnaturally severed from God.
Unwise surgings of action can come with this, as false antidote, so providing
cases in the bipolar arena. Whatever may be the various gods and religions chosen by man, and they are
as numerous as unnecessary, and provocative to the actual Lord as any other
imposture. Such religion is divinely judged with the drama of Elijah at Carmel
to the exposure of the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees by Jesus Christ.

Religions ? Biblically the case is
inveterate, millenial in exhibition: in all but one case, that of the living and self-attesting God,
these things can weigh down the human spirit, or cause it to flirt and flit with
lies as ties. Truth is like. It is one thing but not another.

To be sure, false religions,
painfully produced gods to meet desire or need can weigh differently, depending
on the distortion of falsity which a particular religion may bring; but they weigh
also where irreligion is the vanity and the basis as well. Smuggled religion is
a surreptitious vanity, where 'nature' or 'mankind' is worshipped without the
word.

Some will go to psychiatrists who do
not believe in the soul, in the integrated, integral psychic reality that is the
Designer Product, the thing produced. In this, you would be like going to a surgeon
who had not discovered you had a body. Some will go to many mystical insights,
without evidence or proof of any kind, and 'experiment' with the soul. Some will
go to pills to depress or alter elements of the nervous systems, to induce this
or that mood, to abort or distort or reduce or increase this or that channel-use
or chemical flow. Just as one test found those treated with Freudian concepts*3
had the same percentage healing as those left alone (cf. SMR p.
335), so here, the disturbances of
system, when the underlying CAUSE is frequently spiritual, can produce
disillusion in results, while materialists or secularists grope for causes they do not understand, and
pragmatically look for this mild improvement or for that.

This is merely an illustration in
the mind as functional; but what of the mind as a site for instruction ? In
class rooms in Western style democracies, where the beauty of self-control in
teachers, concern for student welfare, sensitivity to student need, compassion
and kindliness have become mere input for the new look, there has come a
development where disaster is the style and authority is the hatred, where
vital knowledge is always BEING gained, in the sphere of life, but never FOUND, as
predicted by Paul (II Timothy 3:1-5), where guns are used by guards to help control students.
Contracts are formed with students, on no clear moral basis: if you do this,
O student, I your teacher, will do that. How about that ?

Students enter schools with guns,
they behave as if they rave, they insurge, they resurge like food not fit for
the stomach, and others have to stomach it as raids come from this school to
that and some are injured. Teachers seek other professions, principals are
becoming more and more frustrated or anxious. Stress cases abound; and the age of revolution against design is
getting its come-uppance in this as in other realms.

More and more, likewise, employers
(fie to their authority! goes the chant), are not free to employ people of
principle, or of their Christian faith, even in order to preserve explicit
formulations of company policy, so that even Christian schools are attackable if
they want teachers with Christian morals. Indeed, one Principal relayed to me
that he was ordered to stop this moral barrier for his Staff, and for his
expectations for them, and his reply was simple and in this vein.

We have hundreds of students:
if you insist on relativising morality, we will close our doors and you will have a sudden mass of
students to cover in your own State system. The State authorities then withdrew their ultimatum, at
least for the time.

In this way and in that,

by dismissal of truth;

by departure from design as
relevant; by insistence
on SILENCE ABOUT THIS
DEPARTURE, the very loss of free speech,
one of the glories of England in its
better days, a mere item on the Space Age agenda,
and as vacuous as space; and hence

by the limitation of free thought;

by the insistence on anti-design
university premises, quite explicitly in some cases;

by the use of
materialism with its ludicrous and irrational antics (*1)
as a code and guide as by the Secular Inquisition as illustrated so well in the
Canadian case;

by the mass media crusade against
Design Notions and Speech

this Destiny Vacuity on the road of
Declamatory Dynamics proceeds to its illegitimate conclusion, and to its
legitimate judgment.

Consider one moment that Boisson
case mentioned above, the preacher whose tongue was to be so tied into socially
contrived knots.

Here was a case so outrageous, that
it serves as a warning: that you could lose a) social liberty b) financial
stores c) social standing d) freedom to occupy a professional position d)
personal time, as you defend yourself against barbaric assaults. For what cause
? It is because you insist on the Creator and His design, one found in man, in
His stated morals (I Timothy 1:10, I Corinthians 5:11, 6:9 cf. News
19) and your adherence to them in word and in deed.

Talk of 'ancient hatreds' and the
like becomes a popular excuse for showing the hatred of man for the word of God.
In an fearlessly contra-factual flurry, those who often show such hatred of the
word of God that they cannot even abide those who present it, the term 'ancient
hatred' is often wielded like an axe. Those with current hatred seek to accuse
their victims of ancient hatreds. How archeologically ludicrous!

But is it a case of ancient hatred
that they so often attack ? All sorts of hatred are possible, but it is wise to
pause a little for thought before making a diagnosis. If not so common in this
field, it is scientifically at least, conventional.

Where error is exposed in political
or social or religious field, it is by no means necessarily the case that
we have an ancient hatred, and in
Christian terms, this is an impossibility. Is it implied that someone is hating
someone else ? This would need to be demonstrated. In fact, those who warn or
exhibit error to others may do so for a whole variety of reasons. It could be a
thrust of egotism, frustration and envy, it could be a cultural quirk, an
undisciplined frame of mind given vent like lava from a volcano. It could, to be
sure, be these things as may the hatred of the Court for Christian absolutism
(cf. Lead us Not into Educational Temptation).

However, exposure of error and
criticism of it is often wrought for other and wholly contrary reasons. You may
act to warn a friend, whom you love, advise a client, whose welfare you seek,
prevent a catastrophe to those whom you cherish, educate someone with a blank
spot in his mind, before he falls into a pit, and so forth.

To assume the one or the other
without demonstration is a work of gross negligence. To ignore the question,
which is statedly here the case, is an exaggerated version of the same. Let us
take the Christian case, in principle.

GOD IS LOVE (I John 4:7ff.), and if He
hates evil, we are told that to hate is SIN, when it comes to persons. This evil
assault on Christian integrity, this defilement of truth, this distortion of
intention, this reproof to righteousness, this overlay of cultural mirage on
factual truth, this assault on protestation, information and design: what is it
but one of the final depravities of a fallen race. Psalm 109:4 puts it most
incisively and clearly:

"For my love they
are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer.
And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love."

IF the idea is that hatred of any
idea or approach or value is WRONG, then the Judges are WRONG because they show
a hatred, a desire to stifle, remove, penalise, hurt, render unhappy,
dysfunctional, the ideas of the Bible. They would then be condemning themselves
first of all, the very criterion of unjust judges, a walking comedy of
collision, a deliberate default IN THEIR OWN TERMS. If however it is PEOPLE you
are not to hate, then the case is open to investigation, and the Christian case
to knowledge.

The Psalm shows the correct biblical
perspective which biblical Christians seek zealously to follow. Their love is
rewarded by hatred, harassment or unholy assault. Is this a crime ? If so, it is
not from the Christian but from his judges that it emanates. WHO is doing the
clipping of the wings, the assault with law and against financial security,
against name ? It is the judges. If it is the law they interpret, then it is
they in conjunction with the law. Why condemn for your own crime what you
designate as crime, and inculpate those who are innocent with your own guilt ?
Such is the lamentable ecstasy of irrationality into which a sick society can
slide.

It is seeking, it would almost seem,
to relate piously to the biblical predictions as found in Romans 1, where the
INITIAL CAUSE of refusal to face the truth of the Creator and Designer, is
traced on as the verses of this Chapter proceed, to the ethical and sexual
deviances which proceed. Not only, it ends, do they DO these things, but they
approve those who do it! Indeed, they give them acclaim; and one is reminded of
the men of Sodom, when Lot is there, who wanted intercourse with an angel, and
of the SOCIAL AGITATION which resulted as they sought it with force.

There are many forces; and breaking
down the door of a house, an interference with one architectural design, can be
compared with breaking down ethics of life, freedom of speech and especially
liberty to express the love of and ways of God, by the crow-bar of law misused,
a heavy weapon of the neo-moral militias that like predators, depopulate the
streets of truth. It is becoming as it was in the last days of a divinely
exposed and condemned ancient Israel, shown in Isaiah 59.

In 59:12ff., thus, we have this:

"For our
transgressions are multiplied before You,

And our sins
testify against us;

For our
transgressions are with us,

And asfor our iniquities, we know them:

In
transgressing and lying against the Lord,

And
departing from our God,

Speaking
oppression and revolt,

Conceiving
and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.

"Justice is
turned back,

And
righteousness stands afar off;

For truth is
fallen in the street,

And equity
cannot enter.

"So
truth fails,

And he
who departs from evil makes himself a prey.

Then the
Lord saw it, and it displeased Him

That
therewas no justice.

He saw that
therewas no man,

And wondered
that therewas no intercessor;

Therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him ..."

That is PRECISELY what is happening. The
prognosis is correct in principle and in detail.

We need not concentrate on individuals in this;
it is a sickness which can strike any; and it is a syndrome which is
ultra-individual and beyond class, except for this, that the world which hates
God, hates His people

"If the world hate you, ye know
that it hated me before it hated you.
If ye were of the world, the world would love his own:
but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world,
therefore the world hates you.

Isaiah in Ch. 59 proceeds to focus on the
eventual end of this illegal legality, these unethical ethics, these
contra-design, design for destruction specifications, these immoral morals, these anti-Christ
depositions, these inquisitorial persecutions. Christ came to suffer: He returns
to judge. This is the setting; these are the Auschwitz preliminaries, in the
World War IV furore, an ideological war, a counter-truth invasion, which is
coming, and yes, is now beginning to bite.

DESIGNER LIVING -
ITS PRACTICE

Man’s
design is so mathematically brilliant, the billions of cells so punctiliously
wrought in assembly-line procedures, with goods in and product out not only
arranged, but various tasks assigned to MOTORS to get them done quickly, all
keyed into the overall schema, that it is not really very interesting to
consider further whether there could be some magical way in which some designs
created others. Using multiple motors to supply, to match, to fold proteins,
with all the commands in one language, the programmatic building and maintenance
proceeds. In practice, codes just don’t adjust to each other, choose one
language and co-ordinate. They must be created, unified, deployed and their
results integrated with a forceful unity. This is the innovative work for
imaginative intelligence.

Dreams are not good at engineering. In practice LOTS of designs
work hard together to enable other designs to be formed, all being coded so to
do simultaneously or in sequence, as befits the case; and except for the
brilliant way this is done in the body, it is just like other designs,
from the bottom to the top, integrated, time-coded, products interactive and the
like. This one sings in symbols.

Today, our concern is with the LIVING of our designs on this earth. The way
shown in Colossians 3:1-17 is most informative
and even thrilling to consider; an earth like that would be one more wonder of
life, a delight to live in; but sin defiles it. Yet Christ calls us to a higher
life, in conformity to both His design for us, and Himself.

Fear not, Christian,
for they cannot remove your soul! Take heart, for their heartlessness is a final
stab in the syndrome of hating truth, something alas not realised consciously,
but apparent in its batterings against Design, now augmenting the fight for so
long against Designer.

But what is the design at these levels. Let us look at what WORKS, at what has
wisdom, at what is the Designer's own specification, in Colossians 3. Apart
from all else, in these things depicted, there is a better solution even than
liberty of speech, though this does not need to be curtailed when there is
sanctity of heart. Meanwhile, for such liberty of speech can avail, for it
gives to the Christian opportunity to dismiss
the follies of what is false, of what loves to strut, but not to reply.

ABOVE, NOT SHOVE

IF, says Colossians
3, you were raised with Christ, seek those things which
are above.

That is now almost forgotten in masses of
millions of embroiled and tarnished spirits. What used to be an Empire's
assertion (however mixed the multitude which served it), is now almost
compulsively dismissed from thought, while comics of ugliness, advertisements of
carnality and literature of the sink, arise like polluted waters to flood the
house, to embrace
with fungus germs, the feet of those who so bathe.

The things above ? That is, the things ethically
superior, spiritually godly, behaviourally beautiful, peaceable in disposition,
but not supine in heart, the things of willing self-sacrifice and understanding
that does not dip every time a base magnet of desire draws near. They are
further defined by the location of what is meant here,
"where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God." What is above this
world and its manners and mutinies and mutilations of mind, body and spirit is
the category of the Creator, above not directionally but ontologically,
essentially, in eternity as in time, in power as in purity, in self-control as
in sacrificial sanctity.

Why is this counsel, to seek such things which
are above and with Christ, given with such confidence ? After all, do you say to
a pauper, Set your mind on millions ? HOW is this practicable, to set your minds
on the things that are above, with Christ ? It is because HE is sitting at the
right hand of power, of God. What has this to do with it ?

It has this. It proceeds,
"For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."

HOW did you die ?

" I," says Paul in
Galatians 2:20, "am crucified with Christ. It is no
longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me; and the life that I now live in the flesh,
I live by the faith of the Son of God
who loved me and died for me."

The sense of that, its meaning ? IF Christ has
borne your sin (otherwise, the case does not apply - Titus 3:5ff. I Peter 2),
then YOU are the centre of it. If your sin is taken as to guilt to His pardoning
facility, meeting justice in His own payment WITH LIFE itself, taken to death in
the human format, amid suitable anguish, grief and humiliation at its acme, and
there cleansed: this is no mere legal conundrum therefore. YOU are taken, you
the agent of sin, the operator of the psyche, you are taken with your sin
products, the sin-production unit itself, and YOU are there purged by dying WITH
Christ in spirit. Condemned with Him, who dies for you, you die with Him; and
alive by virtue of Him who broke death and having cleared your name, lives for
you as your Good Shepherd, you live by Him.

That is part of salvation (cf. II Corinthians
5:15). IF, then you have been converted, IF you have been saved and justified
(as in Romans 5:1 and Titus 3:5ff., with Romans 8:30), THEN your whole nature
has been denatured as to sin's commission and command, control and savour. You
died with Christ ? It is, then, now Saviour instead of sin-savour which is the
cynosure.

Does this mean that you are sinless ? Not at all,
for as Paul says in that very same Epistle (Galatians 5 with 2:20), the flesh
strives against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. You have been
evacuated from Dunkirk, and restored to your homeland (by virtue of
creation, your proper home); but now that you are there, the war continues,
though you now move with your own troops with freedom and relative felicity,
being surrounded with spiritual truth and standards, encouragement and counsel.

The fact
that the bulk of the 'churches' are now more likely to incite you to folly, and
have become so by radical changes in the last 100 years ought not to smoke out
the fact that this is NOT what a church is commissioned to do. It is set to help
propel your mind from nature to Super-nature, from creation to God, from the
weakness of sin to the beauty of holiness, as it propounds and propels the
Gospel and the word of God to His wayward creation, before its time is up on
this small globe.

LIVE BY HIS LIFE, NOT BY
SIN'S DEATH

WHEN, says Colossians 3:4,
"Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory."
HOW can you wait, Christian! How can you miss it altogether, non-Christian!

THEREFORE, and this is one thing that makes life
as a Christian on this earth a real athletic struggle,

"put to death your
members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil
desire, and covetousness which is idolatry, because of these things the wrath
of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience."

What a world, a society, a spirit, an agreeable
and an interesting, a meaningful and a soaring sort of place is this, with what
pleasantness is one propelled with others in the right direction, with what joy
one sees beauty of conduct and radiance of spirit, surroundings like those
magnificent sites of nature, now personal sights of much joy. Friction is
minimised, fractional living is dismissed, depth of discretion and paths of
prudence appear, loveliness is distilled (II Corinthians 3:18). Such a world would endure.

It would be good to be in it, while it does these
things! Here
is living in a world home which is designer produced, here is designer living, an architecture of life
which is both natural in goodness and supernatural in inspiration.

Now in Colossians 3:12-17, we have a fascinating
series of features for godly, for Designer living.

There is a series which we need to consider: it
moves from the FUNCTIONAL, to the FORGIVING, with the FORBEARING, towards the
FORGING, to FAVOURING spiritual words and songs of joy and truth, then to being
FORTHRIGHT, for Christ and His designer living and designed salvation for man.
This is a matter of openness and integrity,
so that you don't require forensic medicine to determine whose you are, but
rather, it
is readily apparent!

Now we come in order to the first of these:
the functional. You are encouraged to 'put
on' as in the 'new man' and his appurtenances, 'tender
mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering.' How beautiful to
live in such an arena: it is like a personal sunset to witness, on the part of
the soul that beholds these things. Not only do you show mercy, to those in near
distress, to those whose welfare impinges on you, where you may, but it is
TENDER mercy, mercy with heart for the part. With this comes kindness, a sense
of kinship, and this of course is far greater with those who are fellow
Christians (Galatians 6:10), but as the good Samaritan parable shows, not limited to these.
Nevertheless, we are encouraged to be particularly kind to the household of
faith, and if at times, this means being apparently provocative with warning,
yet as with any friend, this is part of living in the truth.

Humility comes with this, like a heater in a car
for cold mornings. It is so easy to enjoy being with the humble; but less so
with the
arrogantly, precipitantly, immodestly intrusive, nor with the factitious, the
fractious, pretenders to it. Not there lies the blessing, with the factious and
erratic, but with those
for whom this is the true word, the meek. Bold as lions for His Majesty, the
Lord, they are quiet for their own interests.

Humble and meek ? There is a
difference here. To be lowly means to know your place, as as sinners redeemed it
is assuredly not exalted; but to be meek is to be slow to assert your prominence,
dominance; but not slow to assert that of Christ, and the works He has done
through you, these must not be hidden. Duty is not a sop, and meekness is not a
solace to the sybaritic. You do not set His light under a bed, but
on a hill, to His glory, for His glory, for from His glory has come the power
for it. Are you a mantle for His light ? then shine for Him, arrestingly
indifferent to the darkness' entry, but not to its dismissal.

Longsuffering is another Designer Living garden
object for the soul. To be willing to endure WEAKNESS and encourage it, what a
grace! Christ is shown in Isaiah 43:1-4 to be like this, not breaking the
bruised reed! It is relaxation to the soul and stimulus to the heart to meet
such.

We
move to the forgiving. It is SO Important, that if you DO not forgive (and perhaps feel
you CANNOT, but with God all things are possible), then you linger in
the darkening dimness of the squalid, yes the foetid and forsaken hollows of the spiritual
universe: NEEDING TO BE forgiving, yet unable to deal with the same coin as
propels your own soul. Those forgiven by God, being in a new man, manufactured
in heaven, though lusted after by the earth, these HAVE to forgive, for their
lives are moulded in it, on it and for it. It is not, for the meek, a stilted or
arrogant forgiveness, let alone an imaginary one, in which the offence is
created in the mind, but not present in history.

Instead, it is a sincere one. To qualify, it has to BE what it says it is.

With this is the forbearing.
Like longsuffering, this is slow to move on provocation, but it has this
specific quality, that it not only suffers long, but does not indulge itself in
spiritual exasperation. It forbears, it lets linger the kindness of heart that
hopes well and looks high for another, that he be elevated, and not below, that
he be inundated.

There is with all this no small sound, but not of
trumpeting. Instead, there is the
favouring of the word of God, which dwells
richly in you, like food for thought, drink for the soul, stimulus for the mind,
vision for the heart, authority for the soul. It lives in you RICHLY (not
as poverty stricken by inattention in your heart, a superficial visitor) IN ALL
WISDOM, since you so meditate on it, night and day (as in Psalm 1), that you
begin to look more and more like a tree planted by rivers of water. Those trees
tend to flourish in size, in health, in beauty and in loveliness. Indeed, you
TEACH and ADMONISH one another, since friend as already noted, sharpens friend,
as iron iron. In psalms, spiritual songs, you adorn the day, singing with GRACE
in your hearts to the Lord.

There is a certain enthusiasm, not that of absurd
athletics, in which people purport to be thrown about by spiritual forces in
some disorderly way, not that of bellowing emotions like cannons on parade;
instead there is
an enlivened and indeed enlivening grace which in its very heartiness, is an
encouragement.

With all this, there is the being forthright, so that what ? It is not in order that special tests have to be
made, people have to ruminate and to do detective work in order to discover
whether just possibly you may be a Christian. You do not dwell and have
fellowship with unbelievers as in the Alpha course in its preposterous sharing
and bearing concept, having these in concert over weeks of courses, with no Biblical authority,
wavelength or disposition in control. You do not even more, dwell where the name
of Christ is demeaned, either by immorality warranted by the church, or attacks
on the Bible, or on the nature of the Lord. Exactly to the contrary, you DO ALL THINGS in the NAME of
the Lord Jesus Christ.

KEEP OUT OF THE STY

One of the things you simply CANNOT do in His
name is disobey Him. Hence when He states through Paul that with those who are
idolaters, fornicators, adulterers, yes or covetous, you CANNOT be mixed, and
that this is applicable only to those who simultaneously maintain that they are Christians (for
otherwise, these being as common as dirt in this world, you would have to leave
it to obey this command), then you simply obey what is written, neither adding
to it, nor trying to change it to concepts not included. If you add concepts not
present, then you simply disobey Proverbs 30:6, and are deploying your own
thoughts in competition with those given. It is flagrant intrusion. It is a
flagrant intrusion, a co-authorship for the Bible without authority.

However, these words of Paul are all plain,
coherent, cohesive. Staying in a church or so-called church with this in its
midst and authorised is flat rebellion against Christ, and while some might even
TRY to do this in His name, it is too ludicrous to mention. Will you in the name
of your Bank Manager, steal from his funds ? Let us be a little serious then, if
not more. Will you share with employes, as one of them, as theft is openly
discussed, or even praised! Heaven forbid.

Instead of going out of this world by not mingling with the forbidden
categories, you merely have such a departure from them that YOU WOULD NEED TO DO
THIS, if all people, rather than only professing Christians with these sins,
were in view. Paul lets them, then relax: NO, the forbidden mingling is not with
ALL of this kind, but only with Christians. You do not need to go out of this
world to obey that, merely out of their corrupted Churches and pseudo-Christian
fellowships. You must seek to be out of partnership of any kind with them,
any fellowship. However, the point being not applicable to all, but only
to believers, false speakers, it is yet the more applicable to these!
With a professing Christian in any of these categories, YOU MAY NOT EVEN EAT!
You can see now how you would have to go out of this world if this applied to
all who do these things, most clearly.

Further, we learn in the next chapter to this
(that is, in I Corinthians 6), that certain sorts of people are NOT IN the
kingdom of Christ. You are NOT permitted to have fellowship with unbelievers,
says Paul in II Corinthians 6:14, making a failure to obey this similar to light
trying to have fellowship with darkness, or Christ with the devil. You will
notice how quickly He gave him the run! (Matthew 4), and on what ground, the
word of God written. It is not written to be re-written, but to be obeyed.

One would
have thought the point was comparatively clear, even to the cataract afflicted,
if it comes to that point. Does Christ have fellowship with the devil ? as well
may you, if a Christian, have fellowship, have mingling with people of the kinds
noted. You may be kind; but this is not to have fellowship. (They may of course
repent and believe in Christ, but then they are no longer in these categories.)

Those in this category:
fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, sodomites, thieves, covetous
people. drunkards, revilers, extortioners. These will not inherit the
kingdom of God.

HENCE they are not
in it, are not Christians.

HENCE they are not
fellowship material, and therefore,
in a church which IS a fellowship of believers*3A, they cannot be,
and in one which sanctions their presence, the believer cannot be.

Hence doing
everything in the name of the Lord MEANS that you vacate such churches.
If people obeyed this, larger churches outside the fallen would exist and
much would be achieved; so that the failure is crucial to the function of
the Church,
and the service of the servants of God. Romans 16:17 is not to be broken if
you value the Church and the Lordship of Christ.

Statistics are irrelevant; social
custom,
the works of the old man, are scarcely applicable, Orders are orders;
and when they come from God, hell lashes out to the soul
which does NOT tremble at His word (Isaiah 66:2), but continues in 'sanctified
disobedience', a woeful oxymoron, for a tragic failure.

Normally, as to a Church, those who seek such
things and display them are cautioned, questioned, and if flamboyant and
rebellious still, are not kept on the roll. People of all sorts can COME to the
services; but when it comes to fellowship, being at communion, being in
discussion about procedure, being pastors, being elders, being in spiritual
meetings of inner revelation and company together, this is not permitted. You do
not discuss your wife's situation with your enemies, or those who do not
understand. There are pearls and there are swine, spiritually, and the two are
kept VERY distinct.

The lost art of church discipline, not as
obtrusive and investigatory like detectives, but vigilant, and not dumb like a
drunken soldier, is necessary in the war at the spiritual level. Careless
indifference about standing orders for the troops is the work of those already
defeated in heart.

Thus the situation in the Uniting Church is such
that Christians are biblically required to leave it; or put differently, those
calling themselves Christians have only two options, to leave it or the Bible
and its authority; to allow another Christ who does not require jot and tittle,
another apostle who did not write I Timothy 1:10, or the above verses, or start
out afresh, if need be, alone and without church property. These categories do
not touch biblical Christianity. The same applies as in the
Anglican case*4 where an Australian Primate declared that you could get to God
without Christ, a position apparently, according to news, taken by the leading
prelate in the Anglican Church in the USA. and so is the case.

Live in darkness with those unenlightened by all
means; but the Design Living is not for this. You reach OUT to those, but they
do not REACH IN to the Church's counsel, sacraments, authority or fellowship.
You can have outreach meetings, but NOT ones involving spiritual fellowship with
unbelievers, far less can you converse on spiritual things in groups where these
things are not authoritative and regnant. You can refresh and challenge them in love; but they cannot be
brothers in the faith, and where they are so received, the faith is another
faith. As Paul says with heavy irony to the Corinthians (II Cor. 11), you might
well put up with those who preach another Christ, another Gospel, have another
spirit!

A church of heart and spirit and reality and
purged realism*5, this is part of Designer Living. FROM this goes out the Gospel,
the word of God, TO it come the converts. IN it, there is the communion of the
faithful, whose hearts seek with compassion, not to misname the pseudo-elect, to subsidise sin with acceptance, but to encourage them to repentance and pardon
with peace in Christ Jesus the Lord.

THE NAME OF GOD:
ITS HALLOWING

In all these fashions, the
principles of designer living, its basis, its dynamic that enables it, Christ's
action which pays for it, and the work of the Holy Spirit which instals it,
the name of God is hallowed. It is shown to be what it is, by what is done through His
power and by His word. With this, there is the Church which practises it, with
due regard to white-anting of the walls of separation by the ants of cultural
conformity, and thus in the name of truth exercising godly exclusion of the
rank sophistries which seek to combine truth with lie, the word of God with the
word of man and the name of the Church with hedonistic filth, psychic autonomy or
spiritual fiction. You do not contend for the faith once for all delivered to
the saints (Jude) by denying its conditions, yielding the Church, the body of Christ,
to this world, allowing property considerations to determine where you are, not
spiritual direction.

Hallowed be His name, then, in that
it is holy, in that we who are His practise the purity of truth, not as
paragons, for which of us is not a sinner ? but as practical people of sincerity,
dismissing the denied, accepting the authorised and living in the power of the
God who saved us, and doing this for the sake of the Lord who has given us grace
to live in His hallowed life, by His Holy Spirit, for His name's sake.

It is that name which the children
of God hallow with awe, with aspiration, with delight, with self-discipline,
with originality of delight, as does love, and according to His word in obedience, as does
faithfulness.

Spiritual Refreshings
...Ch. 9,
incl. End-note 1(esp. programmatic psychology and its ilk), The Marvels of
Predestination and the Ways of Will Ch.
7, including *1;
News 80.

*3A

Thus in Galatians 2:9, the apostles
giving the right hand of fellowship to Paul is equivalent to their
acknowledgement that his ministry is genuine, his case is sincere, his call is
of Christ, that they are all one. Paul and the Church at Jerusalem were thus
unified. TO BELONG to a Church IS to accept as at least tolerable, its standards
and its ways. Where these are formulated amiss, you get rid of that formulation,
not waiting one hour like Paul (Galatians 2:5), or go. The right hand is the
symbol of what is taking place, between this man and the Church at Jerusalem:
and what is taking place by their receiving him, it is fellowship. It is this
which is forbidden in I Corinthians, Romans and the rest of the relevant
commands.

Thus the CHURCH as shown in
Ephesians 2 and 4 is the body of Christ, He the head, and what you join or
continue in, is to be this. If not, then you being where the Head is not, where
indeed He prohibits your being, being in some body or other, you could enquire
as to who the head of this thing is!

Similarly in Ephesians 5, having no
fellowship is parallel to not being partakers. You CANNOT be a member of a
Church without, whatever be the practical arrangements, being partakers of its
communion, both in fellowship and in sacrament, for by membership, you recognise
both. It does not mean that you agree with all it says, but it DOES mean that
you agree to the point of acceptance the legitimacy of their viewpoint whether
or not you agree, so that the right hand can still be given. When these
things are before you, and the issue is not intelligence or insight, but
disobedience, division from the apostles, movement into the forbidden
categories, and when it is explicit, what then ? Then you remain there as a
rebel from God, a participant where you do not belong, fleeing from duty.

*4

A more refined case has recently
arisen. An Anglican Archbishop has led a group of more orthodox persons in
Jerusalem, looking as they say, for the foundations of the faith. Some have
spoken sharply and pointedly of the ludicrous character of the befouling of the
waters by frankly non-Christian doctrines taught by some in the Anglican
professional clergy. Some seemed to deplore what they are finding in immorality
and spiritual malfeasance in the Church. This is precisely the case derided and denounced by God in Ezekiel
34, where this is one of the grounds of His coming to earth in the incarnation,
and doing the job properly Himself.

To recede to that case in ancient
Israel, in the modern 'church' and have the pastures spoiled, as Ezekiel depicts
it of that time, in our own, and by the same follies, is asking for discipline
divine in power but not in happiness.

According to news report, the
Archbishop of Sydney declares that he will not separate from the Anglican
Church! Here then is the test to one, to all, to high, to low. Christ made it
clear that the one who breaks one of the least commandments and teaches men so,
shall be called least, but great is the one who both teaches and does the things
commanded.

Live in darkness with those
unenlightened by all means, if you do not value the command: but the Designer
Living is not for this. In fact, as to the LEAST of the commandments, Paul
likens living in company with unbelievers to having Christ in harmony with the
devil (II Corinthians 6). So to dally is not mere failure; it becomes rebellion
(cf. I Samuel 15:22).

But what were the reasons for the
Archbishop's refusal to separate as reported. Firstly, LEGALLY, he
declared, there was simply no way in which such separation could be done in
Australia. In the USA, he indicated, the main body of that denomination was
seeking legal prosecution against those who sought to separate and withdraw from
it (simply disobeying once more, as excluding the impact of the apostle's Paul
injunction, that Christian go not to law with Christian, in I Corinthians 6:1).

"Dare any of you, having matter against another, go to law
before the unrighteous, and not before the saints!" he demands.

The answer in the USA case appears
to be simply, Yes, we dare! just watch us.

These things do not agree with the
Design for Living, or hallow the name of the Lord, which is demoted for desire.

In the Australian case, the further
word, in addition to the consideration of mundane law, is that there is felt a
love for the old Church. Not remarkable, but there has to be a transcendent love
for the old Cross, and a willingness to obey the Eternal Lord who died on it. Is
it strange to consider that those who have obeyed the Lord in these areas, are
thus left without the congregation of the faithful who should join them, which
SHOULD be the case in the Lord's design for living, and in terms of
hallowing His most blessed name.

Such, by NOT withdrawing, and coming
WITHOUT PROPERTY if necessary, and apparently in this being unwilling to die
daily, to avoid yielding to any love in competition with that for Christ, have
results. They are causing a division in the body of Christ. They mix where they
are forbidden, and keep separate from those to whom they are bidden. Those who
teach so are those of whom Romans 16:17 tells us, AVOID THEM.

You do not avoid a church for which
non-separation on biblical grounds is the rule, by staying in it. That is too
comic for consideration. The body of Christ is not to be drawn to these fault lines
and it is not to live there, like an ecclesiastical Tokyo. That city can
scarcely now move; but people may! (On Biblical Separation see
*1 in 1491.)

Indeed, breach of the command to
separate from what divides as this does, moving away from apostolic teaching,
when not obeyed, when countermanded, countered, not met, becomes mere rebellion. What does it matter how sacred and
sanctified it is made to appear. There is a void of obedience instead of an
AVOID of obedience. You do not avoid a church by being part of its communion.

In these ways, a vast division of
the religious bodies goes on, many staying where they are excluded from living,
in fact instead simply remaining and and constituting members, and so leaving
the side of those who obey by sacrifice. In this, they are like soldiers
fleeing from the front line of battle, calling as
they go, We see it differently! But what about standing orders, the front line
soldiers shout back ? Oh, prudence is the watchword, maybe we will live to fight
another day.

But that is worldly counsel, and you
reject your Field Marshall's orders. What is the line ?

Oh, maybe he'll change his mind.
Perhaps one day, down the line, the body we retain as our own will change. Anyway, common sense dictates.
Leave, separate, why we LIKE it here: we cannot do that.

Such a dictator is not Lord,
however; and its very commonness is not a matter of being crucified with Christ,
but being very much alive, even though He died, and very much not hidden
in Him, whose arm is ready to shield.

When the apostolic teaching is thus
denied, then it has further repercussions as in Romans 16:17. The breach of the
commandments to separate, at length brings in the command of Paul to avoid
such. They WILL not leave what is forbidden; so those who both must and will,
have to leave those who so linger also, rather than stay with Lot's wife ...
Such is the command.

The tragedy of church-versus-Christ
can then arise, and where the latter does not have as in all things the
pre-eminence, the division thus imposed on the Lord's people, thus causes
separation. Unrighteousness has precisely this effect, that its results can
readily ricochet. Consider the pleasant course of brotherly unity however, where
all heed the word of exhortation as in Hebrews, and doing what is required, if a
little slowly, then collaborate in joy.